Page 212 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

212 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

Lave parted from his wife in India, after an abortive
attempt to trade privately there, and later to have settled
down as one of the Company’s representatives at Bantam.
When he took up his duties at Amboina he had had almost
twenty years’ continuous service in the East and was one
of the Company’s most experienced officials. The im­
pression we gather of him from the records is that of an
easy-going free-living Englishman who was not at all of
the material of which dangerous innovators are made.
He evidently, from his letters, shared to the full his country­
men’s distrust and dislike of Dutch methods. But that
he bore no malice—that lie even had no feeling of actual
antagonism to his rivals is shown by a request he preferred
to his superiors at Batavia that they should recognize the
good offices of the Dutch Governor, Herman Van Speult,
in providing the English with a house to reside in at Am­
boina, by making him a present. This suggestion, put
forward as late as the closing days of 1622, came to nothing
because the English Council thought that Towerson had
made too much of the “ dissembled friendship ” of Van
Speult who was designated “ a subtle man.” But the mere
fact that the proposal was made is of great significance
in view of what was to follow.
Van Speult, the Dutch Governor, was an official trained
in the school of Coen, and, indeed, directly appointed by
him for the special service of safeguarding the sanctity of
the Dutch monopoly in the Eastern Islands. He was a
worthy disciple of the great creator of Dutch ascendancy.
In him were united those dour qualities which have made
the Hollander in all periods so formidable a foe. Stern
of visage and taciturn of disposition his whole energies
were absorbed in the task which patriotic duty had im-

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